UK – On Friday, a UK court ordered Prince Harry and six others to pay an initial £9.5 million ($13 million) after they lost their long-running privacy case against the publisher of British tabloid the Daily Mail.
The High Court said the prince and six other high-profile figures, who last month lost their unlawful information gathering and privacy invasion claims against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), must make the payment within a week.
It comes less than 48 hours after the shock news broke that the Duke of Sussex will be relocating back to Britain from California within weeks with his wife Meghan and their two children.
The claimants in the case – who include Elton John, his husband David Furnish, and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost – accused the Mail of bugging their cars and homes, listening into calls, and other privacy breaches. ANL had denied all the allegations.
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After an emotional 11-week trial during which Harry gave in-person evidence, Judge Matthew Nicklin sided with the publisher in a July 7 ruling, concluding the “claimants failed to prove their pleaded allegations.”
After a further two-day hearing over costs, he made Friday’s initial costs decision, while again criticizing the claimants’ case as “speculative and substantially inferential.”
In a published summary, the court ordered the claimants “make an interim payment of £9,544,355” by August 28.
The court noted ANL estimates its total costs defending itself had reached about £34.5 million by July 9, which Nicklin said appeared “excessive” and “largely unexplained,” as it provoked “real concerns as to whether all of the costs now claimed by Associated were reasonably incurred and are reasonable.”
In a joint statement following the judge’s ruling last month, Harry and campaigner Doreen Lawrence called it “a complete and obvious whitewash.”
An ANL spokesperson called Friday’s decision “another overwhelming victory,” adding it serves as “a devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors, and executives.”
Simon Hughes, a former MP and another of the seven, said he was “disappointed and surprised” that ANL’s recoverable costs had not been limited by the judge.
